


The Ability to Choose

by taxicab12



Series: more to me than you can dream [10]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Booker needs therapy, Character Study, Found Family, Gen, normally I end sad things on a happy note but there was absolutely nothing to make this happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26017906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taxicab12/pseuds/taxicab12
Summary: They were all soldiers; that wasn’t a coincidence.Andy was a warrior of old, a fighter older than legend.Joe fought for his people, Nicky for his God.Nile was an American patriot, ready to die for a country that had never protected her.Booker was none of these things.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre
Series: more to me than you can dream [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1878034
Comments: 16
Kudos: 194





	The Ability to Choose

They were all soldiers; that wasn’t a coincidence.

Andy was a warrior of old, a fighter older than legend.

Joe fought for his people, Nicky for his God. 

Nile was an American patriot, ready to die for a country that had never protected her. 

Booker was none of these things.

He was a soldier only under the most technical of definitions, choosing war over execution, then execution over more war. He was clever, had always been clever, but was never much of a fighter.

Then, Andy had asked, well,  _ insisted_, that he come with her, join her warriors and he had refused. He had survived, he only wanted the life he was owed, but it was stolen from him again and again and again. 

So, he became a fighter. He slaughtered and he saved and the two things didn’t seem that different.

And when he deserted them,  _ betrayed _ them, they really had no right to be surprised. It was what he was good at after all.

But then, he shot Andy. He watched her bleed, continue to bleed long after she should’ve stopped.

He didn’t want to hurt her, had never wanted to hurt her. He had just wanted, for once in his very long life, to be able to choose. Their lives together flashed through his head: Andy with baklava on her lips in Morocco, Andy dancing in the kitchen of a safe house in South Africa, Andy’s unimpressed face when they walked in on Nicky and Joe on the couch in the hotel in Mongolia, neither man bothering to look ashamed, but Nicky cooked dinner that night and Booker chose to take it as an apology. Then, there was Nile, the woman he had never wanted to meet, sure from the first dream that she deserved better than this life.

He didn’t want to hurt them, had never wanted to hurt them. He didn’t even want to die, not really, he just wanted a choice in the matter. Death was supposed to be inevitable, life’s one certainty, and without it...

Joe was the one who yelled, but Nicky’s cold glance and Nile’s easy forgiveness hurt just as much.

And none of it hurt as much as Andy, who was the only one to say goodbye, the only one who  _ had _ to say goodbye.

Life was cruel. There were no solutions or happy endings. The only choices, the only ones he’d ever had, were where to suffer and how much to drink.

At least they were easy decisions.


End file.
